From Walk On The Beach To Morning Mass To The Altar

Everyone progresses in a relationship at their own pace. Not only is that true of different couples, but it’s true within a relationship as well. Just because a couple doesn’t have true love spring about simultaneously in a neat, linear way, doesn’t mean it wasn’t meant to be. Rob and Lisa are proof of that.

They met on CatholicMatch by exchanging emotigrams back and forth and made good use of the chat feature. They lived a manageable fifty miles apart in California and she drove to see him ten days after they first made contact. After starting the date with Saturday evening Mass, they enjoyed a wonderful dinner on the harbor and a walk along the beach, a true picture-esque romance.

For Rob, it was truly love at first sight.

Lisa wasn’t quite as certain and chose to keep her options open. It took several more dates, including a day at Disneyland before she felt her heart was in the right place to make the leap.

This all transpired in May and June. By September any doubts about their relationship were gone and they were unabashedly in love. At this point, Lisa’s father did the ideal work for a couple in such a situation — he was a jeweler.

After a long talk between her father and Rob, a paternal blessing for their marriage was secured. The question was popped after a daily Mass, at which point they want to her father’s shop in the Los Angeles diamond district to pick out the diamond and ring. Later, at Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral, Rob put the ring on his new fiancé’s finger.

Literally at that moment the church bells began to ring — dare we say that the new engagement now had another paternal blessing, this one from the Heavenly Father?

Today Rob and Lisa are married and living at his home in Irvine, just outside L.A. They attend daily Mass together to keep their marriage on sound footing. They allowed each other to grow into the relationship at their own pace and reap the rewards of that today.